Blog
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NNATAN
We vet families and can bar them from joining the Op – but once they leave our sphere of influence, the Op must seize control and wield kin as clandestine cover. But the pliant, detached creatures we select for foreign assignment are not householders by nature. Much as we suffer the consequences, and much as it might be humane to do so, we simply cannot execute our children without risking accusations of profound hypocrisy and international outcry.
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Plongeur
“A plongeur is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure. And educated people, who should be on his side, acquiesce in the process, because they know nothing about him and consequently are afraid of him.” –George Orwell
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Memory Scraped onto Landscape with Smell
So horrid and bright to open his eyes. So much better to stay enshrouded in ruddy dark. But other signals were… penetrating too. His gullet came unfastened, pulsing and melting, and a sour bulge of liquid rose and – oh fuck, he sat up too late – popped and disgorged into his cupped hands. He cradled this liquid inch; it had weight and mass, and the gluey but slippery consistency of watered cornstarch. Sweet artificial scents of partially digested alcohol rose from its glistening surface. How much like an offering this was, with its bobbing rice grains and bilious yellow tint (he was bent on his knees in the sand). The smell intensified. A nostril twitched. Revulsion clenched him, and he flung his slop into the fire pit.
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Delhi’s Modernist Architecture
Ashoka Hotel (1957), Chanakyapuri in central Delhi, architect: B.E. Doctor. Veteran photographer Madan Mahatta took shots of some of the prominent buildings that defined the landscape of Delhi from the 1950s to the 1980s, as the city was embracing Modernist architecture. An exhibition of his work is on at the Photoink gallery in New Delhi till July 2, 2012.
Madan Mahatta’s pictures of Delhi’s modernist architecture in The New York Times‘ India blog.
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Our First Expatriate President
Pundits on the right and left have described President Barack Obama as having a distant attitude toward the United States – on the right they call it narcissism and hint at secret agendas and question his patriotism, while on the left they wonder darkly whether he might be “too brainy to be president.” I think it is something else. I have never met President Obama, but our lives have converged in unusual ways. Perhaps unpacking my own intense and complex relationship with the United States might shed some light into what might at first seem like an aloof and distant attitude toward our homeland.
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(Source: hautecatture, via hautecatture)
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(Source: miss-tabithazombie, via thesistersofmercy)
